Backstage reaction to Darby Allin’s AEW World Championship run

For 39 days, Darby Allin thrilled AEW fans with one exciting World Championship match after another. We know it got over with the fans. But how did it get over with the locker room. 

Sean Ross Sapp at Fightful Select reports that not everyone with the company thought that Allin’s title run was a good idea, but Allin impressed his critics in the end. 

“Several skeptics of Darby Allin’s title reign applaud him for going the extra mile to make the reign a special one,” Sapp writes.

Sapp adds that Allin had one believer from the beginning: MJF, the man he defeated for the title, and to whom he lost it. 

“Sources that Fightful Select spoke to believe that MJF had been supportive of the Darby Allin title reign dating back quite a while,” Sapp writes.

For the record, MJF has denied Sapp’s report. “This is false,” he posted on social media. He tagged X’s Community Notes and Community Notes and Violations accounts to ensure the proper authorities were alerted. 

Allin won the title from MJF on Dynamite on April 15; he lost it back to MJF at Double or Nothing on May 24. In between he defended the title seven times. All seven of those matches, as well as the loss to MJF, were rated **** or higher by Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer newsletter. Defenses against Tommao Ciampa and Konosuke Takeshita were rated *****.